Under a Streetlight
by BeyondTheKilljoy
Summary: A sketchy man with strange eating habits, a stubborn boy with an inferiority complex, a young genius with a knack for thinking in puzzles, and a runaway girl who can't shut her mouth. Their stories intertwine in a tale of murder and reconciliation.
1. Beyond: Broken Jars

**A/N: Asuko may not be a real name, let alone mean warm tomorrow. We (limegreenwordmachine and BeyondtheKilljoy, cowriters) apologize for this. BeyondTheKilljoy "found" it on a website, and it turned out she kind of mixed and matched two names without telling limegreenwordmachine -_- This means we may have just butchered a character's name (but rest assured, the focus in this story is not going to mainly be on Asuko). And we promise, you will find out that Asuko has a valid reason for having a Japanese name when she is apparently British.**

**This is the brainchild of two very strange and very bored and very caffeine-addicted teenage writers. Get ready for a long and demented ride.**

Early in the morning, I emerge from the store with three jars full of blood-red pasty liquid, clanking and colliding in a paper shopping bag.

Sound ominous?

It isn't.

It's jam.

After unscrewing a jar lid, I dip my fingers in the jam and pull them out covered in strawberry goodness. I lick them, savoring the flavor as I walk. The sun is just rising and the street lights still haven't turned off yet. I watch as my breath puffs out in front of me, a translucent white cloud in the cold air. The chill in the air doesn't bother me - in fact, I quite like the sharp numbness of the wind.

It does bother me, however, when I trip over a pair of skinny legs sprawled out on the sidewalk, on the edge of a deserted alley. My jam flies out of my hands and crashes on the sidewalk.

My jam. Is on. The. SIDEWALK.

It is reduced to nothing more than a mess of glitter and red. Furiously, I turn to face the culprit, a feminine outline shrouded wild mousy brown hair. She hurls herself to her feet and sprints away from me. In her wake, she leaves a brown shoulder bag; I pick it up and run after her.

She enters a park and I follow her. People are sparse; we pass only a bag lady, too busy chatting with pigeons to notice us.

I am close to catching the figure when she trips over a tree root and hits the ground. Panic rises in her face, but my desire to wring her neck has long since passed.

I walk closer to her and kneel.

"You left your bag," I say awkwardly.

The letters floating above her forehead display her name; Asuko Tomlin. An English last name, which makes sense. But why a Japanese first name? She's clearly not Japanese.

I notice that Asuko Tomlin only has six months to live. Six months?

Who is this girl? What's so special about her circumstances?

She snatches her bag from my hands and says, "I'm sorry... I fell asleep and I guess my legs just got in the way..." She glances up at me, tired and lost. Her face stuns me.

She resembles someone I haven't seen in a very long time – someone I would very much like to see again, but never will. Her eyes are a strange shade of violet (contacts? More than likely...). I look deep into them, and she starts to fidget. I suppose I look quite peculiar just staring at her like that.

"What were you doing sleeping on the sidewalk?" I ask her, still marveling at the memories called up by her features.

"It was a place to sleep," she snaps. With that, she tries to stand. In that moment, I realize how thin she really is. She can't be more than fourteen. When I was a teenager, I had that same skinny, lost quality.

She gasps and stumbles. I immediately reach out and grab her upper arm.

I move my face close to hers and I say, "Everything alright?" She flinches away and I remember that many people are funny about personal space.

"My ankle..." She gulps.

I ask, "How much weight can you put on it?"

"None," she replies regretfully.

"Then I suppose you're going to have to trust me," I say, moving close to her. "Do you?"

"No, not really."

"Ah, well, nothing can be done about that." I say as I scoop her up. Though I have a thin frame, I am stronger than I appear. Besides, she's too thin to be a real challenge for much of anyone to lift. I can feel the fabric of her skirt, strangely placed over tattered jeans, neither of which appear to be very warm. The same goes for her sweater.

I start to walk out of the park. There's not really anyone there except the bag lady, still, who is now lovingly stroking a hairbush. As I carry Asuko, her hair blows in my face, which is quite annoying. It is clear she tried to straighten the mass of brown hair and near-white blonde highlights (such a horrible dye job...), but it's still a fluffy cloud of wild, wavy hair.

I carry her to the crappy motel I am currently occupying and dump her on the foldout couch. I shift my eyes to examine her ankle. My nose gets so close to her skin, it almost skims her ankle. She starts to try to move away from me. Oh. I have forgotten about the universal rule of personal space.

Her ankle is just dislocated, so I pop it back into place. There is nothing that can be done about the bruising and swelling around the ankle, so she will just have to stay off it for a few days. I get up and turn away, shuffling to the door.

"Wait!" she interjects. "Where are you going?"

"Well, when I come back, we're going to have a discussion about why you were sleeping on the sidewalk in Winchester in the middle of November," I say. A soft frown begins on her face, the space between her eyebrows creasing.

I turn away when she says softly but firmly, "You didn't answer my question."

My head snaps up. She seems sharp. I remember hearing those exact words in that tone, once upon a time.

I give her a long stare. "I'm going to get some more jam."

**Alright! Review and tell us what you thought. Chapter 2 will be uploaded very soon, and from there this story will start to take a definite shape, plot, and tone. We promise there will be plenty of chocoholic girly boy and even more strawberry jam. And, if limegreenwordmachine has her way, a healthy dose of Matt much later on.**


	2. Mello: Late Night Conversations

**Hai! Limegreenwordmachine here. This is chapter two of the fic that BeyondTheKilljoy and I are writing together - Under A Streetlight. This chapter is different from the first for a couple of reasons. First, there's a lot more dialog. Second, it's Mello-centric. As much of this story shall be (we promise all the Wammy Boys will make significant appearances, and we also promise that they don't all fall in love with our OC. In fact, we're not even sure one of them will). Enjoy!**

He looks down as he stacks the pieces of chocolate. L – I've been told to call him Ryuzaki - speaks quietly.

"Hmmm... when Wammy's House began and my first possible successors were introduced, they were expected to fail... yes, even if we did not quite recognize it, that was it. All prototypes to see how smoothly the process would run. Just prototypes..."

I stare at him, perplexed. "But why waste resources on test runs? You mean the first ones weren't even serious candidates?"

He looks up from his chocolate (I admit, I really want some). Sticking a piece in his pale, thin-lipped mouth, he answers me. "Well, yes. There were three in the beginning. Of course, the chance was as available to them as it is to you and Near," (I cringe) "but we did expect them to fail, really."

"What happened to them? I mean, I know vague details, but…" I am genuinely interested in the stories of the first successors.

"The first was the most likely to succeed me out of those three, when the program was still new, but he couldn't handle the pressure and ended up taking his own life."

"But Ryuzaki, that's terrible. So that's all he was to you? An opportunity? A test of- " He silences me with a reprimanding look; I bite my tongue. How could I have spoken out against him? He's L, and I'm…not.

"Mello, he knew what was ahead of him. He was the most likely to succeed, which means of course that he was most like me. He was excellent in his deductive skills. He knew there was ah..say a thirty percent chance that it would end badly. No, I take that back. It was more like forty percent..." He takes another chocolate and eats it. "What you have to understand was that he knew there was less than a five percent chance that I would die while he was in line to take up my position. Of course it was still his hope to be L. But even with the small odds, the constant expectations, the weight of the responsibility – it was too much. And that's what he resulted in. He was a wasted opportunity. No less human because of it, but a wasted opportunity, first and foremost."

"How could he do that, then? If he knew that it was more likely that he himself would die than that he would succeed you...why take the chance? What would he do if he never succeeded you?" I stare at him, my eyes wide and my mouth open.

Ryuzaki then stands and walks to the window. Looking out, his left foot rubs his right calf. He sticks his hands in his pockets and says, almost more to himself than to me, "Yes...why would he take the chance? Are we as humans driven by some force to reach for the near impossible? It poses an interesting question..."

He seems to realize again that I'm here, and he turns slightly to face me. "Mello, I think this should conclude our conversation tonight. You've posed some intriguing questions - like you always do. I believe that it is time for you to go back to your room. I need to think."

I would push the issue of staying up with him all night, but he will be here for another couple of days, so I just stand and turn to leave.

"And Mello?"

"Huh?"

"Feel free to have some of the chocolate on the table, in exchange for your maintaining…discretion in regard to our conversation."

I stare at him, then grab a handful of the chocolate and leave the room. I'm conflicted about two things. Is it right to play with human lives that way, to use them as tests or trials? Is it justified?

And if that's how L operates…does he even think of me as a human?

As I walk back to my room, I pass the long curtains in the upper main hallway. I hear a voice as I walk past one curtain.

"Why are you up so late?"

Near. I turn around slowly and see him sitting on the floor playing with one of his dolls (he's always stating the difference between a doll and an action figure, but I don't care). He sets it down and winds his finger in his hair, twirling the pale strand. He stares at me. I reply to his question tersely. "I'm up because I want to be up. None of your business."

My obvious irritation doesn't phase him. He looks down at his toes and says, "I couldn't sleep, so I came out to sit in the curtains. I needed to think."

"Whatever."

"Mello, what do you think our roles here are? We aren't like a puzzle... We can't mess up and just start over. Of course we could, but we could never completely fix that last mess..."

"Why the hell are you talking about that? That doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that we're here, and one day you won't be here and I'll be the one left."

"No, Mello, that's wrong. There has -"

"Don't tell me I'm wrong." That twit has no right to correct me.

"I wasn't saying you were wrong. I'm saying that when you said that it doesn't matter, that statement was incorrect. Everything has a specific part to play. Realizing that is sometimes the difference between life and death. We have to realize our parts. Don't you think so, Mello?"

"My role is to surpass you."

"But, Mello. Are you sure?"

Leaving that to sink in my ears, he takes up his toy again and begins messing with it. I control the shaking in my hands and walk away briskly. It's stupid how he thinks I don't get anything...or at least don't get things as fast as he does. I need some air.

I walk quickly to my room, and wrench open the closet door. I grab my jacket and yank it over my shoulders. I sit on my bed and pull my black boots from underneath my bed. I lace them up and walk to my window. I force open the bottom and step out into the night. Though my room is on the second floor, there is a convenient tree with a branch jutting just close enough to my window.

I retrieve from my drawer a rope that I use primarily for secret escapades. I step out of the window and onto the branch. I tie the rope close to the base, and crawl downward. I step on the ground, and just leaving the rope, I walk towards the front of the cold gray brick building.

The gates are just for show; they aren't kept locked. I get out of the gates, and just walk. I walk down a sidewalk into an older part of Winchester, where there seems to be some sort of festival going on. I pass a bunch of people all smiling and laughing.

I stare at the happy faces, and the bright lights of the stores around me. I watch as a man tries to get people to buy his cotton candy. I see a merry-go-round and a bunch of little kids on it. The thing stops and the kids get off. I watch one little kid in particular. Once he gets off, he runs to his dad and screams, "Daddy did you see me? I rode a horse!"

The dad just laughs and picks the kid up and puts him on his shoulders. My arms cross over my chest and I look away.

A few minutes later, I turn to walk back to Wammy's.

**As we continue to post, the plot will become clearer and you'll understand where we're going with this.**

**Until then, please offer your thoughts! There's a lovely button beneath this note and it says a word that starts with R - click it!**


	3. Beyond: Trusting

I open the door to my motel room, my fingers in my mouth, sucking off the strawberry jam. "Asuko," I mumble with my fingers still in my mouth. I set a bag full of four other jars of jam down on a counter. I pull them out of the plastic bag and set them in the fridge.

When I turn back around, my fingers are back in the jam jar and I speak more clearly.

"Asuko, we need to -" I stop midsentence, when I see her curled up on the couch.

It's clear it was not her intention to fall asleep. She obviously posed herself in an awkward position so as not to doze off. I can see the exhaustion and fear in her face even while she sleeps.

I go and sit on the arm of the couch closest to her face. The resemblance is still so uncanny to me. Technically, her features are different in many ways. But there is something about the way her eyebrows shift and in the shape of her mouth. It is clear she smiles often by the almost invisible creases around her lips, but right now the edges of her mouth slope downward. Perhaps she used to smile often. Perhaps she is dreaming.

What are you dreaming about, Asuko?

Then I remember that dreams only occur several hours into sleep, occupying only a small corner of the period of rest. She cannot be dreaming.

Her eyelashes are almost blonde at the tips, but they grow darker near the base. They start to flutter and she opens her eyes. Her pupils expand than contract as she takes in her surroundings. Her eyes focus on me almost instantly and she screams. She tries to jump up and away from me, but her forehead slams into mine.

"Ouch!"

"GAH!"

I realize how close I was in that second. I rub my forehead while she moves to the end of the couch farthest from me. She shakes slightly and her eyes shine with distrust.

I stare at her for a long minute, then I attempt to bypass the tension. "Uh…hello."

Her eyes get wide and her mouth opens disbelieving, "What were you doing so close to my face?"

"Watching you," I reply, not phased.

"Watching me? You don't need to watch me - I can't go anywhere with this ankle. And you don't even have to get that close to watch me!"

"Well, there's nothing that can fix what just happened, so it's best we just move on." I say, but I secretly feel grateful she wasn't awake when I first came in. I realize now that I said her name without ever being told what it was - which, with most anyone, wouldn't be thought of as unusual. They simply wouldn't pick up on it. But something tells me it wouldn't have slipped past her notice.

"What's your name?" I ask - just so I can start speaking to her by her name.

"Asuko," she replies instantly, even though she is still put out by incident that has just occurred. "What's yours?"

"Beyond Birthday... but you can call me BB. It's a strange name -"

"For a strange person.." I hear her mumble. I fail to mention that her name is strange as well.

"- but that's not really important. What's important is why you were sleeping on a sidewalk in the winter."

She averts her eyes and says defensively, "I already told you - it was a place to sleep."

"A place for stray animals to sleep - not for a teenage girl. Why did you run away from your home, Asuko?" I ask, then pull my fingers out of the jam jar and stick them in my mouth.

She recoils, shocked. I don't know whether it's my eating habits that disturb her or that I have hit a nerve in guessing so easily.

She replies cautiously, "That's none of your business...my reasons, which are as you would say, 'not really important'."

"I see that you don't want to tell me, and I highly doubt I will be able to force it out of you. How about this: You can stay with me until your ankle has healed, but after, you can make up your mind whether or not you want to stay with me or go back to sleeping on the sidewalk."

Her stomach growls and her left arm goes around her middle, trying to block the sound. Of course she's hungry, I realize. I look down at my jam jar and then back up her. I stare at her, then stick my arm out towards her, jar in hand, and say, "Jam?"

She looks at me. I can see the wheels turning in her head; she's debating whether her hunger is great enough to eat jam with her fingers. She sighs, moves closer to me, and sticks two fingers in. Pulling her fingers out of the jar, she looks at the strawberry goodness. I stare at her. She sighs again and puts her fingers in her mouth, ducking her head in embarrassment. She sucks off all the jam off her fingers, takes them out of her mouth, and looks up at me. Timidly, she asks, "Can I have some more?"

I smile.


	4. Mello: Prototypes

"So...what you're telling me is that A didn't realize that he wasn't going to be your successor until he got too far in to actually being groomed to succeed you?" I ask Ryuzaki, finally understanding why "prototypes" were needed. My question confuses me, but he has no problem understanding it. In fact, he's had no problem understanding any of the entire convoluted discussion of the last two nights. The room is dimly lit as last night, and Ryuzaki is as awkwardly curled up into his chair.

"In a way, yes. I think he knew...but not consciously. After he came to realize what was to happen fully, that is when I believe he started to spiral down into madness." Ryuzaki then places yet another sugar cube into his coffee. The sugar cube container is now near empty. He picks up his spoon and stirs madly.

I reach for my own sugared coffee (more sugar than normal, but not as much as Ryuzaki) and sip. My mind goes back to our conversation last night. "Ryuzaki, what happened to the other two kids in the program?"

"Well, the second in line, he was called B. Quite ironic, don't you think so?" He looks up at me and smiles from underneath his messy hair. The effect is rather disturbing.

"So...this B? What happened to him?" I sit forward in my chair and lean towards Ryuzaki. "I think I remember him, vaguely." I remember seeing a young man hunched over, not unlike L himself, having an argument with Roger when I was younger. He kept his voice very low and his eyes very wide. That's all I remember; the older kids mostly keep to themselves in the wing opposite the younger kids. Of course, by now I'm one of the older kids.

"Though A was most like me in his talent for deduction, B was more like me than A...personality wise. He almost mirrored me in his ways. I was never sure whether he was just trying to surpass me at being myself or if he was being genuine. B always loved to challenge... I always thought that he was attempting to compete with me. I could have been paranoid…but one thing is for certain; you remind me of him." He then stares at me to gauge my reaction.

What? My breath gets stuck in my throat and I struggle to form words, "But Ryuzaki -"

He silences me with a look and I sit back down. When did I get up? He sighs and begins speaking softly, "Mello, I don't mean 'challenging' negatively. It is everyone in this entire program's dream to become better than me one day. Your and his methods of exceeding me are different, however. Whereas he was always withdrawn and secretive, you are outspoken and, frankly, quite volatile. You and him are nothing alike, but for some odd reason that I cannot begin to fathom, you two remind me of each other."

I sit in silence for a moment, looking down at my coffee. I glance up at Ryuzaki again and say, "Did he...you know...die?" That's when Ryuzaki goes silent, still staring at me.

"Did he?" I demand again. He's not avoiding my question – people who avoid questions don't look you in the eye. He's formulating the right answer.

"Well, no one is quite sure on that. He stayed at the orphanage for some time after A had passed away, but by then, everyone had come to expect him to rise above A. He was expected to be just as good, if not better, than A. He couldn't take the pressure either, I believe. But, unlike A, he didn't take his own life..."

I say quietly, "So what did he do?"

"Well, he left the orphanage... That's why no one is sure if he's dead or alive."

"Can't you find him?"

"I highly doubt it. There is less than a one percent chance of that happening, because, like I said, he is very much like me. Now, Mello, if I didn't want to be found, do you think anyone could find _me_?" Ryuzaki then sets his coffee cup down and says, "I think it's time for you to go to your room now."

I look at him, and say, "But what about the last one?"

He stands up and starts to make his way to the other room he got at the Wammy's. "I'll be here for another day or two...and besides, I was actually debating taking you with me when I leave - at least for a small amount of time."

I stand up. "Really, L - Ryuzaki? But why?"

He then turns away and I barely catch his words. "That's not really important at this hour, now is it? Goodnight, Mello."

I realize now it's my time to leave. I stand up, but I don't plan on going back to my room for long. I plan on going walking.

Once outside of Wammy's gates, I go in the opposite direction of last night. Though it is highly unlikely that there will be another type of carnival going on, I don't want to take the chance. I want to be left alone. I walk down a sidewalk, with the lamplight guiding me, when a shine catches my eye.

Walking over, I realize it is a small necklace, resting under the gleam of a streetlight by an alley. The chain is broken. I bend down to pick it up. A guitar pick is attached to the chain. I wonder if it was torn off of someone's neck – a victim of a mugging or something? Who knows? I wonder if they'll be back to find it. Probably not.

I sit down on the cold cement, streetlight shining down on me. I yawn. Leaning back onto the cold brick, I realize I haven't slept more than five hours in the past couple of nights…


	5. Asuko: Something I Lost

The first night I spend at the home – if you could call it that – of Beyond Birthday, I sleep fitfully. The foldout couch has a thin, lumpy mattress, and all my life I've had tendencies of an insomniac. My parents often used to awaken in the middle of the night to find me sipping milk at the kitchen counter.

The taste of jam is strong in my mouth, even after brushing my teeth thoroughly. I like jam, yes, but the fruit taste is overwhelming. I want nothing more than a glass of milk right now. I want the faintly sour, mild aftertaste in my mouth.

Thinking about milk, I toss, turn, and finally get up to check the tiny refrigerator. There is no milk. Only jam and a discount diet soda that looks far too old to be safe (the packaging has an expiration date of two years ago). How can Beyond stay in this place?

Who is Beyond? Is that his real name? Where did he come from? Why did he help me? He doesn't strike me as the type to help anyone, really.

What is he planning to do with me?

Nothing good, I suspect.

But at the same time, I don't believe this eccentric, hunched over, creepy young man is planning to do that particular thing they're always warning young girls about. If his intentions are leading in that direction, they are well hidden beneath that mop of crazy black hair.

Climbing back onto the squeaky old cot/futon/couch-type thing, which must have seen thirty or more years, I close my eyes and wait for sleep...but my attempts seem to futile.

I hate this pull-out. My own bed was much thicker. Why did I leave my own bed, again? How did I end up on some random freak's extra futon, again?

I've spent a lot of sleepless, cold nights thinking up words to tell my story. I've tested all sorts of phrases and sequences and openings, from the cliché "dark and stormy night" to "once upon a time." But I always seem to come back to one particular incarnation, and it soothes me. Like a mantra, I press play on my imagination and let it all float back.

_Fifteen years ago, my parents settled down in a British suburb._

Neither of them were actually British. My mom was redheaded, one set of grandparents having emigrated from Ireland; the other set was just natural redheads. She was raised in Connecticut. My father was half Japanese and half American, growing up in rural New York. They had met in college in Hawaii.

When they settled outside of Winchester, they had a precocious two-year-old son with brilliant ginger hair and a baby on the way. I was born near here, increasing the family to four.

My dad, who was in the middle of an obsession with his family history, insisted that I be named something Japanese, despite the fact that I was grey eyed, pale, with a wild mess of plain brown hair. They decided on Asuko, meaning "warm tomorrow".

My brother was born in New York, and I was born in Winchester, England, but we shared a strange blend of dialects and accents, as we spent our school years in the U.K. and spent summers with our mother's parents in the United States.

I adored my older brother. His name was Andrew, and he was very talented at almost everything he laid a hand on. He was a skilled guitarist from the time he was eight. He excelled in every subject at school. He was great at sports. My parents loved me, and I have no complaints about their treatment of me. But Andrew was the real star of the show, with brilliant hair, a brilliant mind, and music practically flowing from his fingertips. He had charisma. He was my favorite, too.

I remember he used to play in a band. I used to listen to the enthusiastic cacophonies they made together for hours, and dream about how one day they would have a place for me. But they broke up because the bass player and the drummer had a spat over a girl. They both remained friends with Andrew, though. Everyone was Andrew's friend.

When Andrew was fifteen, he went out for a ride on a summer afternoon, while we were staying in Ohio. He'd known the driver, who had just gotten his license, for years. They planned to spend the afternoon loitering at a musical shop. They never reached the shop. A drunk driver rammed the car from the side – the passenger side. Andrew died on impact. My brother's friend, by some miracle, escaped the clutches of the black body bags and was able to feed himself by the end of the year.

My family seemed to curl in on itself without Andrew. We retreated permanently to the United Kingdom. My mother grew cold and hard. My father grew distant and hunched. I grew unenthusiastic. My parents did not forget me – in fact, they paid more attention to me than ever. All of my parents' hopes for Andrew fell on my bony thirteen-year-old shoulders. I was expected to make all high marks in school, without fail. Anything less than the best would not be tolerated. I was expected to take up a musical instrument. They said it was to give me an edge in applications for a scholarship to a university, that they only wanted what was best for me.

I think they really just wanted to hear the strains of music floating from the upstairs again.

I chose the bass guitar, partly because it reminded me of Andrew and partly because I wanted to play anything at all but the guitar. Piano would have been my first choice, but my father lost his job. We could no longer afford my stuffy private school (wasn't complaining about that), let alone a piano (which I did complain about. I complained a lot – I was immature and a bit spoiled).

I found myself playing my bass in Andrew's old room every day. My parents never could go back in there, so they never came in to yell at me about how horrid I played compared to Andrew. Everything was left the way it was before we left for that summer. As I said, my parents couldn't bear to touch the stuff.

Sometimes I found myself not playing, just sitting there, thinking about Andrew. I would imagine him sitting there next to me on his floor, laughing and saying, "Asuko, you know...you and me could be in a band...if you ever focused enough to learn the bass." Then he would ruffle my hair and make me laugh... I sank into my own imagination to hide from what was going on in my house.

The house sank into squalor. Dishes piled up in the sink. My father halfheartedly searched for a new occupation, then with only a corner of his heart, then with absolutely no enthusiasm, and then he stopped looking altogether. Bills stacked up in the mailbox. My mother slept and slept, hour after hour and day after day.

I was slowly failing my classes in school, losing my drive to pass. I'd never had a problem with my lessons before. I had always been able to get by without much effort, which suited me because I had no enthusiasm for hard desks and papers. I'd always been a fidgety, spacey child. But now, I sat still and blank and doodled nonsense (mostly about Andrew) into my mind.

I was an empty shell. I exhausted every possible fantasy about him coming back, about anything different ever happening. At the same time, I felt as though I were suffocating under my parents' grief, like I would never be allowed to leave the shadow of his death. Everything was the same every day. Nothing ever changed.

In short, I was growing very bored.

Then one day I walked in to find a shattered plate on the floor, my mother sobbing, the sink running, and my father on the couch watching a daytime game show. I left. I'd had enough.

I couldn't pack my beloved bass. I couldn't pack even half of my old clothes. I settled on bringing a toothbrush, my only skirt for the summer, and a pair of my favorite tattered jeans for the winter. I brought two t-shirts and a jumper (or sweater, my multi-dialect brain reminded me). I put on a clunky pair of Andrew's old boots, hoping they would be warm and serve as a reminder of him. Every bit of clothing I took, I wore on me. I grabbed two bars of soap and some baby wipes. I had a bulky first generation iPod that I'd found on the street earlier that year – it had fallen out of some unlucky teenager's backpack, more than likely. I didn't know much of the music, but it was a treasured possession.

Before I left, I went to Andrew's room one last time. I took out his old guitar - the one he'd only ever play in his room - and started pulling off a string. It finally came loose, and though it popped me under the eye, I pulled it free. I grabbed one of his old picks and strung it into the string.

I felt as though I were doing something daring and brave, something to honor Andrew. Of course, I wasn't. I was being one of those stupid kids who thinks they can make it on their own.

When I was reported a missing person and a truant, I began to lie as low as possible. I wore purple contact lenses to disguise my eye color, straightened my hair with a cheap straightener I'd nicked off of a beauty supply store, and streaked my hair with platinum. I did a terrible job of it.

After three or four days, I had managed not to be recognized and the police investigation was quickly winding down, considered hopeless. I didn't know whether to be disappointed or pleased.

I usually made sure to find a bridge to curl up under or something, so as not to be noticed by police, faithful viewers of newscasts, or rapists. I liked to lurk at night and sleep during the day. I ate what I could get, did odd jobs, and somehow began to heal. I lived less in my world of fantasies and became acquainted with hard, gritty reality.

Fear constantly hung over me, and problems I had never anticipated appeared, like where to shower, and what I would do to stay warm when it got colder. But I vowed I would make it on my own. I brought these problems on myself, and I was going to tough them out. When I had to, I dug through garbage bins. Sometimes I stole. It made me feel oddly liberated. I knew eventually all the vows in the world wouldn't keep me from having to go back home. But I liked to pretend I could do this forever.

Then one night I sat down for a few minutes and fell asleep under a streetlight, fingering the pick I wear around my neck.

I sloppily finger the loop around my neck, and then stop, blood running cold.

My necklace isn't there. What? How could I have lost it?

I need it. I have to find it. What if I never find it again? I begin to panic, skin heating up. What do I do?

I'll have to look for it. Should I go now?

No. I can't. The logic works against my panic. I won't be able to get back in the room, and my ankle is swollen and painful. Besides, someone's probably picked it up off the sidewalk or something. The thought makes my stomach turn.

No one else can have it – it's mine. It's my remaining piece of my brother. I curl in on myself, my stomach a mess.

Will Beyond take me to get it?

I don't sleep for the rest of the night.


End file.
